When our $600 gas range, purchased twelve years ago during our university student years and selected because it was the absolute cheapest gas option we could find, decided to start taking one hour to heat to barely 300 degrees, we questioned the sense in fixing it. It seemed like the perfect moment to seize the opportunity and go shopping! Off we went with dreams of Wolf and Viking, paired with the reality that those were beyond our budget comfort zone. We thought we would settle for a Kitchen Aid, and then we saw it. The Bertazzoni.

No bells and whistles. Beautiful timeless design. Really quite affordable compared to its Wolf and Viking companions. Built to last forever, to live in an old Italian country house, and to be passed down to future generations. We were sold on the pretty, functional, old world beauty.

I was giddy with excitement when the lovely Italian appeared in my kitchen last weekend, and it has been cooking romance ever since. It seemed only appropriate to break it in with a proper Italian Sunday dinner, and so with hopes to try out everything from the range top to the oven, the decision was made easy. Osso Buco with truffle honey polenta and steamed asparagus with Parmigiano Regiano.

I called upon a tried and true recipe from the NAIT Culinary Arts “Tour of the Mediterranean” class that Cream and I attended a couple of years ago, and it did not disappoint. This classic veal shank stew is tender and rich with red wine, tomatoes, fresh sage, garlic, and onion, and it falls apart the way only a dish that slow cooks can. If you are searching for elusive veal shanks in Edmonton, The Italian Centre Shop stocks them in their frozen section. And if you are looking for the perfect vessel, I always reach for the jewel of my kitchen, the Le Creuset French Oven. Worth every penny, it gets used more than any other pot or pan in my cucina. With a few recipe additions and modifications of my own, this Osso Buco was a perfect Sunday dinner paired with a crusty loaf from the Treestone Bakery and followed by Duchess Bake Shop treats.

Here it is modified to generously serve two, or double it to serve four.

Osso Buco

2 veal shanks
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour
1 large onion, finely diced
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 celery stalk, finely diced
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 bunch Italian parsley, minced
1 – 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes, hand crushed with juice
1 sprig of fresh sage
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup beef stock
1/2 cup good red wine (I like a nice Italian Primitivo)
Parmigiano Regiano rind (a nice addition if you have one)
kosher salt to taste
fresh ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Salt and pepper the veal shanks and dip them into the flour so that they are well coated. Shake off excess flour. In your large French/Dutch oven, or a large heavy bottomed cast iron pan or skillet, heat 1 tbsp each of butter and olive oil. Sear the shanks in the hot pan for 4 to 6 minutes until golden brown on both sides. Remove and set aside.

In the same pan heat the remaining butter and olive oil. When heated, add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and Italian parsley. Saute for 10 minutes until soft.

Next add the tomatoes, sage, bay leaf, beef stock, wine, Parmigiano rind, kosher salt, and fresh black pepper. Cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes.

If using a French/Dutch oven, nestle the veal shanks into the vegetable mixture and cover. Or if using a roasting pan, put a layer of the vegetable mixture on the bottom, add your veal shanks, cover with remaining vegetable mixture, and then cover with foil.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 3 hours (or more for extra tenderness). Check the pan from time to time to ensure that it doesn’t dry out. Add a little more wine if required. Remove Parmigiano rind and bay leaf before serving.

I like to serve it over truffle honey polenta (see Cream’s last post on perfect polenta and mix in a dollop of honey and a tablespoon or more of truffle oil to taste before serving), and steamed asparagus with a drizzle of olive oil, fleur de sel, and a generous shaving of Parmigiano Regiano. And don’t forget to dip your crusty bread into the marrow.

Finito.

This post is pretty simple.  I made bagels. I made bagels.

What more is there really to say?

Let’s try this:

I recognized the specialness of bagels when I was about eight years old on my first family visit to Ottawa.  My aunt made a special trip to Bagel Bagel near the Byward Market for bagels and lox one morning.  It was then I acquired a taste for cream cheese and fell in love with the donut-shaped baked good.  Most of the Edmonton bagels I ate were buns with holes—too airy, not chewy. I fondly remember The Bagel Tree.  But that closed down.  There were years with paltry substitutes from The Great Canadian Bagel, but then Dr. Atkins rained on that parade.
I did not have a decent bagel again until I moved to Toronto.  My bagel shop of choice was Kiva’s.  Grad studies’ stress meant that I was a big fan of the oversized poppy twister.
In the last few years, I’ve been lucky to have friends bring me Fairmount bagels from Montreal on a regular basis.  And now in Vancouver, I have both Solly’s and Siegel’s to rely on for stocking my freezer with real bagel goodness.

And by real, I mean boiled.  Not misted, not glazed.  Boiled.

So, why try making my own when I’m now essentially in Edmontonian bagel heaven?
I don’t really know.  I just did it as a February baking project.  And after taking that baking course at NAIT last winter, I knew I could do it.

The results?

Wonderful.

But… a lot of work.  Time, elbow grease, patience, research.
Because of the number of people who have blogged about baking bagels via Peter Reinhardt’s famous baking book, I decided I would use that recipe.  Lots of blogging means lots of information on pitfalls, tips and tricks.
I read that a bagel is a bagel because of 1) the boiling and 2) the flour used.  High protein/gluten flour gives bagels their distinctive chewiness.  A bagelry will often have flour of a higher gluten percentage than bread flour.  Where did that leave me?  Adding vital wheat gluten to all purpose flour.  I don’t have the space for a five kilo bag of bread flour, but I do have the space for a small bag of gluten (found at both Save-on Foods and Whole Foods).  Information on how much to add was inconsistent, but I went with one teaspoon for every one cup of flour.
The dough was stiff.  Too stiff for a Kitchen Aid and almost too stiff for my weak arms.  But I ploughed through.  All by hand.  All on my little counter.
It’s a two-day affair, with about four to five hours needed on the first day, and about one hour on the second.  I referred most strongly to the notes I read on The Fresh Loaf (where recipe is from) and Smitten Kitchen.

Peter Reinhardt Bagels
Makes one dozen bagels.

Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups bread flour*
2.5 cups water

Dough:
0.5 teaspoon instant yeast
3.75 cups bread flour*
2.75 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of malt powder (or 1 tablespoon malt syrup or 1 tablespoon honey*)

1 tablespoon baking soda
Cornmeal
Toppings (sesame, poppy seeds, etc)

Day 1:

1. Stir the yeast into the flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and stir until all ingredients are blended. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for two hours.

2. Remove the plastic wrap and stir the additional yeast into the sponge. Add 3 cups of the flour, the malt powder, and the salt into the bowl and mix until all of the ingredients form a ball. You need to work in the additional 3/4 cups of flour to stiffen the dough, either while still mixing in the bowl or while kneading. The dough should be stiffer and drier than normal bread dough, but moist enough that all of the ingredients are well blended.*

3. Pour the dough out of the bowl onto a clean surface and knead for 10 minutes.*

4. Immediately after kneading, split the dough into a dozen small pieces around 4 1/2 ounces each.* Roll each piece into a ball and set it aside. When you have all 12 pieces made, cover them with a damp towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.

5. Shaping the bagel:  punch your thumb through the center of each roll and then rotate the dough, working it so that the bagel is as even in width as possible.

6. Place the shaped bagels on an oiled sheet pan, with an inch or so of space between one another (use two pans, if you need to). If you have parchment paper, line the sheet pan with parchment and spray it lightly with oil before placing the bagels on the pan. Cover the pan with plastic and allow the dough to rise for about 20 minutes.

7. Test the bagels:  Drop one of them into a bowl of cool water: if the bagel floats back up to the surface in under ten seconds it is ready to retard. If not, it needs to rise more.  When ready, place the pan into the refrigerator for the night.  The dough can rest in there for up to two days.

Baking Day:

8. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Adding one tablespoon of baking soda to the pot to alkalize the water is suggested to replicate traditional bagel shop flavor.

9. When the pot is boiling, drop a few of the bagels into the pot one at a time and let them boil for a minute. Use a large, slotted spoon or spatula to gently flip them over and boil them on the other side. Boil the tops first.

10. Before removing them from the pot, sprinkle corn meal onto the sheet pan (you can keep parchment from overnight rest). Remove them one at a time, set them back onto the sheet pan, and top them right away, while they are still slightly moist. Repeat this process until all of the bagels have been boiled and topped.

11. Once they have, place the sheet pan into the preheated oven and bake for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to 450 degrees, rotate the pan, and bake for another 5 minutes until the bagels begin to brown.*  Remove the pan from the oven and let cool for at least 15 minutes.

Notes:

Sponge and dough—I wanted whole wheat bagels, so I made the following substitutions for the all purpose flour:  2 cups of whole wheat flour in the sponge, 1 cup of whole wheat + 0.5 cups oat bran in the dough.  I also added 0.5 teaspoon of cinnamon to the dough.
Vital wheat gluten—I added one teaspoon per cup of flour and REMOVED 1 teaspoon of regular flour (I was worried the dough would be too dry otherwise.)
Flavouring—I added honey.
Step 2—I ended up having to add a few tablespoons of water in the mixing process to get the dough smooth.
Step 3—I kneaded for 15-20 minutes.
Step 4—I made smaller bagels, ~100 grams each, and got 16 out of this recipe instead of 12.
Step 11—After turning the heat down, my bagels baked for an additional 8 minutes, not 5.

I have to say that I  am quite proud of myself for pulling this off.  A Sunday brunch of fresh bagels from your own oven is a beautiful thing.  I had my first toasted one yesterday and it was perfect.   So chewy I could cry.

My oven did that!

Remember how I loved my Momofuku Milk Bar experience so much?

The Momofuku Compost Cookie

I finally got around to trying my hand at recreating the Compost Cookie experience.
Verdict:  failure.  But, not because my cookies were icky.  They just did not taste like the original.  But given that I have a small apartment oven, made up my own recipe and am not a pastry chef of great provenance, I done just fine.

I wanted to keep my first attempt simple.  No crumbs or grounds.  (I also know too many non-coffee drinkers.)  Butterscotch chips can be hard to come by, so I added peanuts.  Next time, I would add more of everything.  I had about two cups of add-ins, but I easily could have increased that to three.  Another “aw, shucks” moment came when I bit down on decidedly uncrisp potato chips and pretzels.  I have no clue how the ones in the original stay so crispy!

In any case, what follows is one of my favourite drop cookie batters—note the lack of white sugar.  To ensure I always get chewy cookies, I underbake by just under a minute.  Freezing is fine.  I actually love cookies just out of the freezer.  After a defrost of about ten minutes, I am in cold dough heaven…
(Remnants of my childhood eating English Bay batter out of the fridge.)

My Compost Cookie

2/3 cup melted butter
2 cups lightly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons hot water
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2-3 cups add-ins (such as chocolate, nuts, pretzels, potato chips)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
In a large bowl, beat melted butter, brown sugar, eggs and hot water until smooth.
In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir into butter mixture until blended.
Stir in add-ins. Drop onto ungreased/parchment cookie sheet.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool 1 minute, then move to wire rack.

I was fourteen when I went to Italy.  At the time, I could appreciate little more than gelato, cobblestone streets and glimpses of David’s naughty bits.  My true romance with Italy did not fully hit until I started learning the language in university.  So since then, I have longed to go back.  As this longing has grown and my palate developed, I can now understand why I favour Italian cuisine so much:   simplicity.  And not in the sense that it’s not worth going out for because you can make the dishes at home.  Good Italian food is not based around tasteless tomatoes, wilted basil, and mushy pasta…  crimes often committed by both the professional and home cook.  Good Italian food is the best ingredients combined simply to taste amazing.

Flipping through the pages of a Christmas present reminded me of this.  The recipes in David Rocco’s Dolce Vita are all based on only a handful of ingredients.  The sweet life is such because it’s not fussy.  It’s bread dipped in olive oil, biscotti in vin santo.  That’s amore.

When tasked with a dip for New Year’s Eve, I looked to David for inspiration.  I tinkered a bit and was proud of the results.  Creamy, cheesy, SIMPLE.   Quite cozy on the snack table with the other treats and the midnight bubbly.

Happy New Year!

Ricotta Dip
1 454-g tub of ricotta cheese
Small log of goat cheese
3 cloves of garlic, minced (roasted is preferable)
Zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and black pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients well and smooth into serving dish or bowl.  [Can be chilled in advance at this stage.]
Before serving, drizzle with more olive oil and top with more s&p.

I love Christmas. The baking, the smells, the sounds, and that warm nostalgic feeling that always creeps in. On a cold a snowy Edmonton day, while listening to the musical styling of Bing’s “White Christmas”, we decorated the tree. A fresh and lovely smelling pine, little white lights, peacock feathers, the little 1950’s flower rings on the lights that were once on my Dad’s Christmas tree as a child, and all the ornaments that I have been collecting since my very first Christmas. My sweet mother always had an ornament for each of us to mark each year. My favourite remains the little wiry doll with matted auburn hair in a blue gingham dress from my first Christmas in 1974 . She goes on the tree first every year. The little tulle fairies circa 1910 that were once on my Grandmother’s tree run a close second, and hanging them on the tree this year I was reminded that this will be our first Christmas without her.

Lovely Irene was a fiercely independent, joyful, strong, and talented woman who lived a full 99 years of spitfire life. An outdoors woman with a love for a nature, a nice glass of rye at happy hour, and a dirty joke or two, she was a light in our lives. Irene was a meticulous cook with many gifts in the kitchen and a panache for entertaining. As we said farewell to her this year, we carried on a tradition that ended many a tipsy gathering at her house where the neighbours would roll down the alleyway still singing “Goodnight Irene” after a night of delicious food, drink, and company. It was bittersweet.

So this year, it is with extra gratitude that I pull out her little hand written recipe cards to prepare the things that taste like Christmas to me…things that were always made with love by her hands. The first is her Traditional Christmas Carrot Pudding with Vanilla Sauce. This rich, sweet, spiced, steamed carrot cake is so tender and delicious. It warms the air in the house with smell of all things Christmas. My second essential is Butter Tarts…made with currants and NEVER raisins, loads of butter, and a touch of cream. They are sweet and delicious and magically disappear. This year as I grate the carrots, and whip the butter, I know her spirit is near.

Christmas Carrot Pudding with Vanilla Sauce

For the Pudding:

1 cup grated raw carrot

1 cup grated raw potato

1 cup flour, plus 1 tbsp

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup raisins

1/2 cup currants

1/2 cup dried cherries

1/2 cup butter

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

2 large cleaned and buttered tin cans ( I use large tomato cans)

Cream the butter and sugar to a smooth paste. Add the grated carrot, half of the grated potato, and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix dried fruits and the tablespoon of flour to lightly coat the fruit, and add it to the first mixture. Sift the one cup of flour together with the spices and add to the mixture blending lightly. Dissolved the baking soda in the remaining half cup of grated potato and add it to the mixture last, lightly combining all the ingredients.

Fill buttered cans with batter leaving an inch and a half at the top. Cover with parchment and tie tightly with string. In a large pot ( I use a pasta pot) boil water so that the cans are just submerged at the bottom, cover tightly, and steam for 3 hours or more.

For the Vanilla Sauce:

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp Flour

1 1/4 cups hot milk

dash of salt

3 tbsp Sugar

3/4 tsp vanilla extract

In a small saucepan, melt butter and whisk in flour over medium heat. Do not brown the butter or flour but cook gently for a minute. Add hot milk and gradually stir over direct heat until mixture thickens. Add sugar and salt. Cover tightly and cook on top of a double boiler for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla.

To serve:

Spoon warm cake out of tins into bowls and top with the warm vanilla sauce!

Butter Tarts

1/3 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp cream

1/2 cup currants

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

24 tart shells

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Mix butter and brown sugar together. Add cream, currants, egg, and vanilla and combine. Spoon into pastry about 3/4 full. Bake at 450 degrees for 8 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake until pastry is golden brown. Cool and serve.

“Irene good night, Irene good night,
Good night Irene, good night Irene,
I’ll see you in my dreams.”

It took me almost two months to turn my oven on.

After the upheaval of a move, a new city, and a new job, I’ve found little energy to do much beyond cereal and toasted bagels for myself at home. For a few weeks I’ve thought about turning that little dial and crossing fingers for proper calibration. In preparation, I have slowly been building up my kitchen arsenal.
Perhaps the death knell of the weekend finally roused me. Because it was a Sunday night of all times that I decided to take the plunge and bake. Cookies.

Quick to drum up and certainly not complicated-how come cookie recipes are never listed under “One Dish Dinners”?-these peanut butter and chocolate chip gems have all the cookie attributes I prefer: soft, not too sweet, and guaranteed to please workmates the next day when they’re left in the office kitchen.
That is, it’s one thing if I like my own cookies, but if others do as well, I’m a very happy girl. I’m sure I have said that before.

Did I mention that they are also topped with fleur de sel?

You’re not something these days if you haven’t been topped with fleur de sel.

First we welcomed fat back into our lives, then salt. Thank god.

Whenever I think of food trends, I think of that line in When Harry Met Sally when Jess says that he wrote about how pesto is the quiche of the 80s. Is fleur de sel the quiche of 2008 or 2009? Truffle oil had to be the year before that, no?

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies with Fleur de Sel

The recipe is from Whole Foods.
This was the second time that I’ve made them and I made one tweak: milk chocolate chips instead of dark.
I also think it’s important to use a natural peanut butter (simply peanuts and salt, such as the Adam’s brand). I always have chunky on hand.

Bacon. Salty, sweet, crisp, chewy, fatty goodness. For breakfast next to eggs, for lunch nestled between toast, lettuce, and tomatoes, for dinner a la carbonara, and for dessert?

With comedy odes to the cured confection and a smattering of hot young chefs rethinking the salty ingredient, bacon is back on the menu as a decadent treat to finish the meal. Portland’s Voodoo Donut is turning out the maple glazed bacon donut. LA’s Animal Restaurant , which was our LA dining highlight this summer, has found a hit in its Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar with Salt and Pepper Anglaise. And closer to home, Edmonton’s Kerstin’s Chocolates boldly offered chocolate covered bacon for those salt loving Dads for Father’s Day.

Inspired by pork, salt, chocolate, and those that have gone before, I embarked upon the Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookie project. With a recipe in hand that had only too many disclaimers about adjusting this and that to avoid dryness, I decided that I would adapt my own perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. It goes a little something like this….

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze

1 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2-1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups of cooked bacon bits (Good quality bacon is key. A quick cheat: use the fresh cooked bacon bits from Sunterra Market)

1 cup dark chocolate chips

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

5 strips of cooked bacon, cooled and cut into one inch strips (to top the cookies)

For the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tsp maple extract

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp water

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt, and set aside. In a large bowl, cream butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla, until light and fluffy. Gradually stir flour mixture into creamed mixture.

Add both chocolate chips and cooked bacon bits. Mix to incorporate.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a cookie scoop (my favorite cookie baking tool next to parchment paper) or your hands, make approximately one inch balls.

Bake for a total of 9-10 minutes. I recommend swapping the cookie sheets racks half way through baking to ensure even baking of both.

While the cookies bake, mix the Maple Cinnamon Glaze by combining the powdered sugar, maple extract, vanilla, and cinnamon, and mix together until smooth and creamy.

Once baked, move cookies to a cooling rack, add a small amount of glaze, and top with the reserved squares of crisp bacon.

Soft, chewy, sweet, salty, indulgent cookie perfection. Warm from the oven, they were so good that I forgot to share.

It would seem that I am predisposed to enjoying high maintenance birthday treats. Never a connoisseur of yucky whipped Safeway cake frosting, DQ ice cream cakes, or store bought cakes with my name scrawled across the top in pink letters, I was ruined at a young age. My first birthday cake was a labour of homemade love with fresh squeezed oranges and lemons in the cake and in the sweet delicious icing. That perfect first birthday orange chiffon cake set the standard and I have never gone back.

My mom threw birthday parties on a budget like have never been thrown before. Being a summer baby, the backyard was often transformed in the month of August into whatever had been dreamed up for the big birthday event. Rolls of newsprint turned into water colour painting stations along the fence, paper across the garage door transformed into an old fashioned fishing game with prizes, water stations, sand stations, family friends dressed as hippy love clowns, and an old refrigerator box decorated, cut, and transformed into a puppet stage to name a few. These were just the beginnings of what would develop into my love a throwing a great party.

Over the years I have planned more than a few elaborate parties from a James Bond scavenger hunt that culminated at the shooting range, to a white trash birthday party that involved fake tattoos, po’ boy sandwiches, and karaoke at the Rosslyn Hotel. And this year the party was a backyard drive-in movie screening of The Breakfast Club that included dressing up as the characters, Captain Crunch, ham and cheese, sushi, and pixie sticks. We endured the humid post-rain mist in the backyard as the weather did not cooperate, and enjoyed the athlete, the princess, the brain, the criminal, and the basket case just the same. With John Hughes’ tragic and coincidental passing less than a week after the party, it was a fitting tribute. I “fake bobbed” my red locks, put on my biggest fake diamond studs, brown skirt, pink top, knee high boots, and fancied myself the red head heroine of my youth, Miss Molly Ringwald…aka “the princess” Claire.

With “Breakfast Club informed treats”, and mandatory truffle popcorn on the menu, the only big decision left to make was the birthday confection. Despite the yawn factor of cupcakes shops on every corner, I have in years gone by established a bit of a cupcake queen reputation. My usual recipes are one of two…NYC’s Magnolia Bakery’s Traditional Vanilla Birthday Cake with Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting or Ina Garten’s Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.

With a desire to try something new, I tracked down a highly rated recipe that covered cream cheese frosting, citrus notes, rich carrot cake, chocolate and coconut requirements. All the elements of the perfect “old man dessert” standards that I love best… Carrot Coconut Cupcakes with White Chocolate Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting!

The cakes were moist and tender, and the creamy frosting, though bordering on a glaze with my addition of a teaspoon of lemon juice and an extra cup of icing sugar, set well in the fridge and was delicious and delicate. A sugary maraschino cherry on top for the brain “Brian Johnson” who is NOT a cherry, and may or may not have motioned to Claire, was the perfect addition. After all, love is in the details.

Vietnam still holds me.  I miss the food, I miss the weather, I miss the people, I miss the noise, I miss the energy.

So when an opportunity arises for me to somehow connect back to it, I grab on.

At the last book club meeting I hosted, we were discussing a book that took place partly in Cambodia.  And for my purposes, Cambodia is close enough to Vietnam to make a culinary cheat leap when deciding what to make for snacks.  The book does mention a character often eating a baguette sandwich… which of course is Vietnamese banh mi by any other name.  So really, I wasn’t cheating all that much.  And when I found the perfect recipe for a banh mi mise en place, the menu was shaping up perfectly.

While the chicken was well flavoured from the marinade, the standout ingredients were the pickled carrots and fresh bread.  I kept to the recipe closely with the exception of the onions, daikon, lime (a member’s allergy caused me to use lemon), and the salad.  I marinated the carrots for about 6 hours and everyone raved about them.  I placed a special order at Cobs for the small baguettes.  They were all chewy, golden goodness.

Unexpectedly, banh (loosely, bread/cake) became another theme of the evening.  While walking aimlessly one night in Hue, I decided to try a sweet I had seen a few times in display cases.  Simply labelled “banana cake,” it had the look of an upside-down cake; caramelized bananas atop a moist, white cake.  The flavour, however, was more like a bread pudding.  When I started searching for a recipe, I found that the cake I had tasted and had wanted to make for book club was called banh chuoi nuong.

Like any good bread pudding recipe, eggs and milk make over stale bread.  And like many good dessert recipes from tropical climates, coconut and banana have leading roles.

After a few bites, you immediately understand why banh is such a widely used prefix in Vietnamese cooking.  Everything it touches turns delicious.

Banh Chuoi Nuong

8 bananas

2 day-old/stale French loaves (not baguettes)

2 eggs

1.25 cups sugar

2 cups milk

2 cups coconut milk

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla

0.5 teaspoon cinnamon

Slice bananas and mix with flour, 0.25 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons of the butter, and cinnamon.  Beat eggs with the remaining cup of sugar.  Then add coconut milk, milk, vanilla, and remaining butter.  Remove crusts from bread.  Slice into 0.5-inch slices.  Grease a 9-inch glass pie plate.  Quickly dip the bread slices in the egg mixture and lay the slices into the bottom of pan to create the first layer.  Squish bread down as much as you can.  Add half of the banana slices.  Repeat bread layer, squishing down again.  Finish off with the rest of the banana slices.  You may have leftover bread and banana slices.  Bake at 350 degrees F until golden, about 45 minutes.

Let cool completely.  Serve at room temperature.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn’t hurt it.

Ten years ago in the month of May, I drove down an alley and peered over a white fence to scope out the backyard of a house for sale on our list of possible properties. Being the organization freak that I am, I had a sheet printed from the MLS for each property so that I could jot down essential notes and details. Apple tree? Check. Lilacs? Check. Raspberries? Check. Peonies? Check. Rhubarb? Check. All of the essentials that reminded me of my childhood backyard were there in abundance. The note on the sheet for the little Allendale house built in 1948 read “So cute! We’ll take it!” and we did.

Thankfully, since gardening is not my forte, I have quickly learned that one does not have to be a gardener for things to grow in abundance. As a result of my well established garden, and despite my garden negligence, I enjoy fresh mint in my mojitios, chives on my baked potatoes, sweet fresh raspberries for jam and snacking, and perfect red rhubarb that is always turned into my Mom’s recipe for Rhubarb Crisp at least a few times a year. It’s a bit like a time capsule, and to me is one of the ways to carry on the tradition of beautiful things made by the hands of those we love that are no longer with us. So last week, as I prepared to bid farewell to my newly sold childhood home, with thoughts of my mother, my lovely sister’s birthday, and a plethora of fresh rhubarb standing tall in the garden, there was no better moment to go back in time with the taste and smell of hot fresh Rhubarb Crisp. Hot from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I know my Mom was there saying “Happy Birthday Mindy Maude”!

Linda’s Rhubarb Crisp

For the Rhubarb Layer

4 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup water

For the Crisp Layer

1-1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup quick rolled oats

1-1/2 cups brown sugar

3/4 cup melted butter

good quality vanilla ice cream or pouring cream to serve

Combine rhubarb, sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and cinnamon. Spread out mixture in an 8×8 buttered baking dish and sprinkle with the 1/2 cup of water.

In a bowl combine 1 cup of flour, oats, brown sugar, and melted butter. Mix to make a crumb mixture. Sprinkle over rhubarb.

Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 35 minutes. Serve warm with pouring cream or good quality vanilla ice cream.

Because food made with love is the best food of all.